For many years, many people have challenged the appropriateness of government funding of Planned Parenthood because the organization concurrently has received both funding to counsel pregnant women and to perform abortions. It is a basic principle of ethics that one cannot have any self-advantageous incentive, financial or otherwise, to counsel another person about a moral decision of such great magnitude.

Elected by voters set on eliminating taxpayer-funded abortions, President Donald Trump recently has called on Planned Parenthood to separate its abortion business from its other services in order to qualify for continued government subsidies.

Democrats For Life of Americasupports this compromise because:

This accommodation satisfies the longstanding and bipartisan federal policy that prohibits taxpayer funding of abortion – a policy that is supported by most Americans. Planned Parenthood’s current extensive provision of abortion procedures (they are the largest abortion provider in the S.) sets it outside the acceptable parameters for receipt of federal government monies.

At Planned Parenthood, tax dollars currently subsidize “pregnancy counseling” services. This “counseling” gets taxpayer-funded reimbursement despite the fact that the primary pregnancy “service” Planned Parenthood offers is abortion. This bias invalidates the “counseling” because the organization clearly has a material interest in encouraging every pregnant woman to schedule an abortion. According to Planned Parenthood’s 2014-2015 annual report, they served approximately 2.5 million people and performed 323,999 abortionsbut provided only 17,419 prenatal visits. And how many of those prenatal visits entailed “counseling” a mother to choose abortion rather than to choose birth?

If Planned Parenthood declines the compromise, the taxpayer funding should be allocated to the 9,800 Community Health Centers in rural and urban communities around the country that provide comprehensive medical care and other health care to more than 25 million people, far beyond the minimal reproductive services provided by Planned Parenthood to only one-tenth as many people.

DFLA Mission Statement

Democrats For Life of America advocates and supports programs and policies that respect and promote life from conception to natural death. This includes, but is not limited to, opposition to abortion, capital punishment, and euthanasia. Learn more...